Genshin Impact – How much can you play for free?
Genshin Impact is a free-to-play open world RPG by Chinese developers miHoYo, boasting gorgeous colourful environments, fluid combat and a plethora of playable characters. Not only is Genshin Impact full of quests and content, but it’s also available on virtually every platform.
But is there a catch? We all know what “free-to-play” usually means – at best, a litany of advertisements filling your screen at every opportunity, and at worst a gameplay system that makes it virtually impossible to progress without putting your hand in your pocket and stumping up some real-life money.
It’s time to get down to the real questions. How much of Genshin Impact is actually free, and how much do you have to spend? Here’s everything you need to know.
How much of Genshin Impact is free?
You’ll be delighted to know that Genshin Impact packs a remarkable amount of completely free content.
Ultimately, the quests and story are entirely included for free, with the main paid content coming in the form of characters and weapons. You can reach the end-game quests with your starting party plus you are likely to gain some extras along the way if you are playing regularly and completing enough quests to earn free rewards in the gacha system.
When you put this into context, the average new game costs at least $60 (with many AAA titles now even higher) and an increasing number of paid games are leaning heavily into micro-transactions. This only solidifies what an impressive offering Genshin Impact provides for free.
Can you complete Genshin Impact for free?
Yes. It is absolutely possible to enjoy Genshin Impact to its fullest without ever paying a penny of your hard-earned cash.
You can still obtain plenty of pulls for free by completing certain tasks in the game. Some of these will only reward you for your first completion, whilst others will refresh periodically and can be continually milked for the in-game currency you need.
In general, you won’t gain as many pulls so the laws of probability will dictate that you are unlikely to scoop many five-star characters and items, but you’ll still get by and will eventually get lucky. Moreover, you can definitely complete the main story quests with the freebies on offer.
Is Genshin Impact pay to win?
There is currently no PVP element to Genshin Impact (although there is co-op), meaning you don’t need to worry about things devolving into a pay-to-win farce. All quests, including end-game content take place against AI and can be beaten without purchasing anything.
Even if PVP is added in future, which has long been rumoured, then this will of course be entirely optional.
What do you spend money on in Genshin Impact?
Like every free-to-play game, there’s always an option of improving your experience at a cost. Genshin Impact is no exception.
As a gacha game, in Genshin Impact your money is most likely to be spent on ‘Pulls’, which effectively allow you to draw a reward out of a lottery-style system, such as a character or a weapon. Some are rarer than others, and you can select which type of reward you want to go for.
The basic procedure is that you would buy Genesis Crystals with real money, which are exchanged for Fate items, effectively acting as your lottery tickets (ie. ‘Pulls’). Genshin Impact has a pity system that guarantees you will eventually get a decent reward, but sometimes these rewards may require a huge number of pulls.
For instance, you are guaranteed a four-star rarity wish after a modest 10 pulls, but a five-star rarity wish will require 90 pulls to be guaranteed.
Now, you can get rewards before these thresholds if you are lucky, but like all forms of gambling the opposite is also true. A pack of 6,480 Genesis Crystals costs $99.99, and Fate costs 160 a pop, so your $99.99 effectively equates to 40 pulls. Needless to say, this cost can rack up incredibly quickly, so it’s definitely worth deciding in advance how much you are actually willing to spend. Technically, you are not actually guaranteed a five-star reward unless you spend $299.97.
The pity counter does carry over until you snag the five-star item/character which is probably scant consolation when you’re out of pocket by the better part of $300! Note that it does NOT carry over for different banner types.
How many wishes and pulls can you get for free?
If you aren’t spending money, then you will need to obtain as many Primogems as possible within the game, which can be converted into wishes, pulls and ultimately new characters and weapons.
Primogems can be obtained in a wide variety of ways, but obviously take longer to acquire in the field rather than simply paying for them to land in your collection. The free ways to obtain Primogems include:
- Fixed quests which often have Primogems as rewards
- Daily quests (four per day, amounting to 60 Primogems if you complete them all in a day)
- Minigame events
- Treasure chests
- In-game achievements
- Spiral Abyss (essentially a challenge mode where the hardest levels refresh their rewards multiple times per month)
- Battle Pass achievements
- Character levelling
As you will note, there are numerous things that dish out Primogems which can be repeated indefinitely, such as daily quests and the Spiral Abyss. Once you’ve got enough, exchange these Primogems for wishes and you can start rolling the dice. Over the course of a month, you can certainly earn 10 or more pulls, which might just be enough to snag you some great rewards if you’re lucky.
What is the best value?
If you have resigned yourself to spending some money then certain perks represent far better value than others. The Genesis Crystal methodology is a sure-fire way to burn through your savings, and being a more thrifty player myself I would not recommend this at all.
Many people end up spending a more modest amount on two things – the battle pass and the Blessing of the Welkin Moon.
The Welkin Moon simply awards you 300 one-off Genesis Crystals and 90 all-important Primogems every day you log in, costing $4.99 for 30 days. If you make sure you log in every day, that’s 2700 Primogems and just under 17 pulls. You can also trade your Genesis Crystals for Primogems on a 1:1 ratio.
The paid version of the Battle Pass is known as the Gnostic Hymn Battle Pass (or the more expensive Gnostic Chorus), which boosts your in-game rewards and more importantly grants an Intertwined Fate every time you gain 10 levels. You will also end up with materials and a guaranteed choice of a strong weapon when you reach level 30. In the picture above, this is the one on the left-hand side.
Both of these equate to around $15 per month to guarantee yourself a solid amount of pulls, but in my opinion these are only worth considering if you are going to play virtually every day.
The sad reality is that even spending a lot of money does not guarantee you the specific characters you want, so plenty of players see the $15 sum similarly to an optional monthly subscription to give some gameplay boosts. Even then, it’s probably only worth it if you are expecting to clock up a lot of gameplay hours over the course of a month.
How much money has Genshin Impact made?
If players can effectively get by for free, does this business model threaten the future of the game by making its maintenance financially unfeasible?
Well, not so much. It seems like miHoYo’s business plan is working flawlessly. The allure of the free content has lured in a staggering number of players, and clearly a large chunk of them are perfectly happy to spend their money in-game.
Sensor Tower reports that Genshin Impact has made over $3.7 billion between its launch in September 2020 and September 2022. This makes it one of the most profitable mobile games in the world. And these figures only include mobile platform revenue, so the true total is likely significantly higher.
Things have no sign of slowing up, with the player count still increasing. As of the back end of 2022, there are consistently over 60 million monthly players worldwide!
Genshin Impact’s future looks healthy and secure, and there continues to be a large amount of new content regularly included.
